Yesterday, I took a trade in PNRA - Panera Bread Company. I set a target, and made sure I followed a plan of holding the stock until the close, before I covered my short. The stock made me a profit of just .30. My risk was over a dollar, so the gain was minor. PNRA basically drifted after I entered it. Today, in my CBG - CB Richard Ellis Group Inc trade, I made a quick exit with all my shares. I realize I’m lacking consistency. Trading is an art. Following trading patterns is not an exact science. I can combat this by selling in partial amounts consistently, and keeping track of my results. Here’s the CBG day trade.

Here’s an example of premature evacuation in a trade. The daily chart is bullish and CB Richard Ellis Group is up on volume early in the trading session. I missed the first entry early. The next setup was to buy the stock over the recent high of 26.72 on the daily. The weekly chart had blue skies above the new closing high of 26.80.

My entry of 26.74 and stop of 26.44 under the red candlestick gave me R = .30. The premature evacuation occurred at 26.99 when I sold the whole lot for not even 1R. I failed to set a target and sell in partials. Those two aspects of my trading will be incorporated from now on.

Selling partial amounts and setting tartgets will allow the trade to gain as much R as possible. That’s the goal here. It looks like I need to remind myself to focus on R, and not the profits, as to allow the trades to play out.

I had a restful break from trading the last few days, and climbed back into my turret for the action today. Valero Energy Corp - VLO was my first target. As the bulltrader points out, energy ETFs have not been kind to the energy investor for the last few months. That’s why it’s advantageous being a trader. I like to track the OIH. I’ve mentioned a few other oil sector stocks on my watch list including CLB, MRO, SWN, COG, ECA and VLO.

Valero set up a bull flag on the daily chart that I spotted last night. One economic number I do pay attention to is the Oil reserves number which usually comes out an hour after the stock market begins trading. This is around mid-morning each Wednesday. It moves these oil service sector stocks every time, so it’s one to be aware of.

VLO was slowly trading in a choppy pattern for the first hour. I like to take the high over the 30-minute high if a stock is showing momentum. When the oil inventory number hit, I noticed the OIH start shooting up. My Valero alarm triggered, and I executed a buy at 52.99. I’ll run a tight stop loss on a trade like this. The purpose of it is to break out. If it stalls, something is wrong. Get out. I’ll mentally set a stop, and monitor the stock. In the case of VLO, it acted as I wanted.

The plan was for a quick profit. Setting trailing bar stops works well for this. You can see on the chart where the stock was stopped using this method. A partial sell could have been planned, but with a fed meeting later in the day, I chose to sell the whole lot.